WoW what an epic battle....but then...

[Pirateiam]

Ok I am a little confused about this epic battle I had in a Multi-player game, maybe one of the veterans can explain why this happened. Here was the scenario:

I am playing as Machaka in a Multi-player game hosted by Zen. My God is a Lord of the Sun 4 fire, 4 nature, 2 earth. I was moving my army south after signing a peace treaty with my Arco northern nieghbor (I guess there was a diplomatic foul up since the next turn after talking about this peace treaty Arco invaded.) With my main army south I decided to allow him (actually I had no choice ) to go straight to my capital. My God with some spider knights were holed up in my castle. Instead of using my whole army I split it. Amazons would take the provinces that he had taken on is invasion route to my capital while the rest would hit his main army along with my God and S-knights coming out of my castle.

Arco Army :

Aprox:
20 elephants in middle
30-40 heart compan on left flank
10-15 Peltests right flank
20-30 odd infantry thrown about
12-16 shamans (which he communion slaved (WOW)
6 misc mages
GOD - That dang flying Griffin How he got 550 HPs
I will never know

Machaka Army:
20 Spider Knights
10 Hunter spiders
50 Machaka archers
15 Machaka Hvy Inf
30 wolves, bears, small spiders
8 Black Sorcerors
2 witches
20 misc infantry and undead
My God Lord of Fire (with lots of Armor and ench sword)

I knew that my Sknights and Hunter spiders would have to carry the day. I sent them in the middle to rout the elephants with archers behind to help in the rout. The infantry was to tie up the Hoplites until the spiders helped. Everything went perfect with the elephants easily routing but his God got in the middle of my SKnights and with the (lame) astral shield just kept parylizing them. I think this is too powerful of a spell at such an easy level. With that stupid spell he froze most of my knights and My God while they pummeled him, but in the end he was poisoned and in the end fled which he parished because they were cut off. Now here is where the communion slave casting hurt me. I had no way of getting to his mages (no flying units and his flanks were covered). The mages kept casting Gifts from Heaven which decimated a good portion of my army. In the end the battle took close to an hour just to watch!!! It was epic and is what I have been waiting to see in a Multiplayer game. What is wild is that BOTH armies in the end routed which was great for me but BAD for him since he had nowhere to retreat but I was able to keep close to 60% of my army alive. Here is what bothered me - My god was never Killed he was paralyzed but unharmed but when the time limit came he was killed. I thought that that only happened to the attacker if he loses. This was a draw with both armies retreating but since I still owned the province why should I lose my God. I think this needs to be addressed in the next patch.

Strategy questions:
1.) How do you defend against a high level astral shield?

2.) Communion slave/Communion Master yikes!! How to stop if they are well protected and you do not have flying units?

Thanks for any feedback

I love this game!!!!

[Taqwus]

Astral shield can be beat via high magic resistance, or by using non-melee attack forms.
Communicants can be killed through a variety of ways, depending on how protected they are -- somebody using Communion could take advantage of the "masters boost themselves along with communicants" feature and cast Invulnerability, Iron Will / Antimagic, Mistform, Elemental Fortitude, Astral Shield et al. If they're missing an elemental immunity, you could use something like Grip of Winter or Heat from Hell, or alternately Foul Vapours -- spells that mess the whole battlefield. There are non-elemental battlefield hitters that test only MR, like Astral Tempest and Soul Drain. Then there are methods that only test prot (like Rain of Stones), and methods that are basically unresistable (prot doesn't matter that much when you've just been smacked for 150 damage by a meteorite; Mage Bane is an unresistable KO as well). And of course, you can smack them outside of a set-piece battle -- Earth Attack, Leprosy, Fires from Afar, Flames from the Sky, Murdering Winter et al...

[Pirateiam]

My God had a +20 MR but still was paralyzed after hitting his astral shielded unit about 5 times. How much more magic resistance do you need? I do not have a problem with being paralyzed for say 3-4 turns but not 40+ turns. I think this is a great game and there are a few things that need to be fixed, but to me this is a game killer. Astral shield paralysing effects need to be toned down. The battles would be much more interesting then one SC with astral shield running around yelling hit me hit so you can be paralysed for the rest of combat.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Pirateiam:
My God had a +20 MR but still was paralyzed after hitting his astral shielded unit about 5 times. How much more magic resistance do you need? I do not have a problem with being paralyzed for say 3-4 turns but not 40+ turns. I think this is a great game and there are a few things that need to be fixed, but to me this is a game killer. Astral shield paralysing effects need to be toned down. The battles would be much more interesting then one SC with astral shield running around yelling hit me hit so you can be paralysed for the rest of combat.

Well, unless his pretender had _very_ high level of astral magic than he is is asking for a lot of troubles in MP, because everybody and thier grandmothers could be hunting his SC to astral-duel him.

Screening him with lots of other astral mages would help of course, but it is still quite risky IMHO.

[ April 04, 2004, 23:43: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Pirateiam:
Astral shield paralysing effects need to be toned down.

The astral shield paralysis effect is only supposed to Last for one turn, but currently, no paralysis effect ever wears off.

[Endoperez]

Does Communion help against Mind Duels? And even if it doesn't, wouldn't Arco as an astral power be able to duel all those enemy mages down? It has risks, but currently Astral-using Manticore is very powerful... and worth the risks.

[DLC]

2 solutions just came up with to counter communion(only works if he does not have a staff of storms on a commander or if he casts storm).

one of the costs 30 bloodslaves and 5 fire gems.

the other one costs 5 wind gems and 5 fire gems.

and you need construction 6 and either bloodmagic or conjuration magic research.

guaranteed to kill pretty much anything almost.
(i'm leaving the details for everyone to figure out )